Why is zero plural? (2024)

Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by kgeist on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @12:46AM (#42789449)

Russian has singular, plural and paucal (reserved for small numbers: 2-4). Interestingly, zero is plural, not paucal:

  1 kot "1 cat"

  3 kota "3 cats"

but:

  5 kotov "5 cats"

  0 kotov "0 cats"

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Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by lIl-IIIl on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @03:44AM (#42790528)

Also 101 becomes singular again, as on "101 kot".

There are websites that capture these rules for all common languages, to assist localization and translators.

English is

nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);

Russian is much more complex:

nplurals=3; plural=(n%10==1 && n%100!=11 ? 0 : n%10>=2 && n%10<=4 && (n%100<10 || n%100>=20) ? 1 : 2);

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Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by SilasX on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @02:26PM (#42796518)

English has the same issue with ordinals. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... then back to 101st, 102nd.

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Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by msuvakov on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @02:57AM (#42790239)

Same in Serbo-Croatian: 1 mačka 2-4 mačke 5+ mačaka 0 mačaka

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Re:Why is zero plural? (2024) by PinkSheep on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @08:02AM (#42792352)

> Slavic family: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, Croatian

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